All for a roof on Top!

How it all started... the sudden repugnance towards the paying guest Acco that has been my home for 19 months. Repugnance is the right word to use considering that I have been living under the same roof with a landlady like mine!! .When Preethi* (my friend – name not changed; The identity does not need any protection) and I decided to move in here and first met our land lady…we had our own doubts about what we were sticking our head into, but since the place was decent (pls note: place not Aunty!!- for the rest of this blog landlady will be referred to as aunty) and well within our budget, we settled for it.

Aunty and her atrocities is something I can write a separate blog about… but I’m not, as this is up for public viewing. Somehow we put up with everything and lasted 19 months, we got used to the daily ramblings, the geyser not working especially in winter, and also stuck to the rule “not allowed to go in or out of the PG when her dog is taking a stroll.”. Well she calls it the “Dog Walk time” and if u walk around at that time you will get bitten… (Which happened to me...) and that won’t bother her. I had to make plans accordingly and come home well before 9:30 PM or after 10:00 PM. Thank god I did not have to salute the dog before walking in. And then one fine day Preethi throws her hands up and says…”we’ve stayed here too long! I’m bored, its time to look for a new place”.

Since we always fancied living independently and cooking(both novices though! At both ;)), we thought we’ll look for a house. And so it all began.
Initially FreeAds—looked up places, circled relevant ones and then never called. Infy and Wipro Bulletin boards proved to be of great assistance in our effort to zero-in on the places.
We were particular about koramangala since we got used to the luxury of missing 2 or 3 company buses in the morning and still managing to make it to office (not necessarily on time but still making it).
We saw ads like 1BHK for 5k and 2BHK for 7k, and thought “WOW..!!!! koramanagala is actually not that bad in terms of costs. People were just being unreasonable when they complained it’s skyrocketing day by day”. when we ran in our excitement to see the place we realized that the 1 BHK was not really a 1 B,H and K it was just a 1 B(read bathroom) converted into a 1 BHK and located in the remotest lane on the farthest end of koramanagala. The 2 BHK had 2 B’s 1H and 1K no doubt but the 2 B’s looked like you can enter the room and only stand, and to make yourself more comfortable you could choose to stand on one leg, and there ends the room.

After a series of disillusioning searches, we found a place I love to call “Nasiruddin’s house”, and all the people who were interacting with me during that phase knew the Projected Hero(projected as hero by me obviously).
Nasiruddin by the way was the landlord of one of the better 2 BHK’s in koramangala. When Preethi and I saw the place we loved it. So much so that I closed the Ad thread that was running on the BB stating “this has been finalized” so that no one else enquires about it !!( pretty Calvinistic I must say…I was proud of it all the same). About the house---it was wonderful!! We could hop, skip and jump to our bus stop and that was the most important thing. We wanted to fix it up but unfortunately (now fortunately u will find out why) for us Nasiruddin was in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage tour and was running late jaggi thought he probably got stoned there and might not come back..!!), we had to wait for a week or call Saudi Arabia. ‘We’ chose to follow the former even though I wanted to go by the latter (Preethi got her way). One week later Nasiruddin was back from Saudi, hale and hearty with no visible stone-hit marks. We talked to him with the hope to negotiate on the rent (as promised by his daughter) but he didn’t budge. I was still keen on settling for it, but a new stumbling block landed on our heads. Immediate occupation guarantee, no other girls to move in with us and the initial cost of setting up a house would be borne by us. One might wonder why we didn’t think of this before - We did, but it took us till after almost finalizing what a big burden it will be!! So now fortunately we didn’t jump into it and finalize Nasiruddin’s house only to realize later “Oh! What a weigh down this is!”

I opened a new thread in the BB for Nasiruddin! (Here, I need some applause pls!!!)

So now we’re back to square one sans the FreeAds bit. Again hail Infy and Wipro BB.
The Search now had an added criterion. 2 BHK with 2 girls already in it (ok guys relax-the house is for us; wipe off the smirk!!!) and all the basic amenities TV, maid, kitchen set up with Gas connection. After 2-3 days of frantic searching, we hit upon a house with a girl who had already occupied it, and needed 2 others. The place was pretty good, very close to the bus stop and to my surprise affordable! So that was it, we paid up! You’d think it’s over right? We settled for a place and paid up! Can there be anything more??

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity!

What for? Now a week after I paid up and given a one month notice at my PG aunty, I checked on some more Ads to see what we missed! (That’s called Cheek, with a big C)
Word of Caution - This is something you shouldn’t ever attempt. After you’ve bought something (especially something expensive), you almost always find something better. People generally don’t do this in case of real estate or rental, but then that’s just a thumb-rule and I always end up biting mine!

I thought I’ll see the place and if it really turns out to be better, I’ll convince Preethi and myself to forget about the money we paid the other landlord! I spoke to a girl in the better house who was supposed to call me, fix up a time and show me the alleged better place.

6 hrs and a call that never turned up convinced me that it was a bad idea and that I should just forget about it - In the hope that the place we thought was better should in reality be not-so-convenient (ok….I’ll just be blunt –BAD).

Now we’re happy that it’s finally over and done with. We have a readymade place with all the things set up for us to move into next month. All of you are invited for the celebrations, of course with gifts for THE HOUSE.